Mutex wrote:Well, my strategy of refusing to get my hopes up seems to be paying off.

I wonder if the GOP will take this as a clear warning shot and rethink their deeply unpopular tax bill. I mean, what could be a clearer warning than losing Alabama? Somehow I doubt they'll take heed though. More likely they'll rush even harder to get as much passed as possible before Jones takes his seat.

I think this is more a reaction against a particularly awful candidate than a referendum on the tax bill. Trump voters turned out and duly voted for Moore, there was just also a really good turnout to oppose him. Sure, sure, an unpopular president has down ballot effects, but Alabama is normally safe as houses for Republicans. This couldn't have happened without Moore being outed as a predatory sort.

There might be a lesson for them to learn of "don't abuse power to be awful to women/children" or some such, though. If they take it.

CorruptUser wrote:I said it before and I'll say it again. Except for a few fringe people, people are perfectly fine with rich people having more money than poor people; people are upset that being rich or poor is increasingly diverging from contributions to society. If society requires your labor to function, there is no excuse for that society to let you remain poor. If you provide little to no benefit to society, there is no excuse for you becoming richer.

/rant

Honestly, I don't think Republicans are all that different as far as contributions go. They love castigating people they see as useless to society, and arguing that they ought to have less.

I let some neighbors leech off my wifi and had assumed the incest porn suggestions were indicative of their fetishes getting associated with my IP. I don’t know whether to be relieved or concerned that it’s just the rest of the internet’s fetish instead.

gd1 wrote:Would you like dial up for 30.99 per month? Or Would you like to upgrade to decade old speed for 60? Higher speeds will cost per GB used. [Just speculation]

They can already do this at will, net neutrality doesn't affect that.

More like "Enjoy unlimited* broadband access for only $59.99/mo!"

*Full network speeds apply only to sites in provider network. Network speeds to access Imgur, Youtube, or Steam are limited to 1 KB/s. Please purchase our Deluxe Bundle for $129.99/mo to include Youtube, or all three for only $199.99/mo more. All Hulu access will cost $50 per GB.

existential_elevator wrote:It's like a jigsaw puzzle of Hitler pissing on Mother Theresa. No individual piece is offensive, but together...

If you think hot women have it easy because everyone wants to have sex at them, you're both wrong and also the reason you're wrong.

gd1 wrote:Would you like dial up for 30.99 per month? Or Would you like to upgrade to decade old speed for 60? Higher speeds will cost per GB used. [Just speculation]

They can already do this at will, net neutrality doesn't affect that.

More like "Enjoy unlimited* broadband access for only $59.99/mo!"

*Full network speeds apply only to sites in provider network. Network speeds to access Imgur, Youtube, or Steam are limited to 1 KB/s. Please purchase our Deluxe Bundle for $129.99/mo to include Youtube, or all three for only $199.99/mo more. All Hulu access will cost $50 per GB.

Just realized: It's hard to pass things in congress. People protest and your political stake is on the line. So why not make a sub agency that deals with the issue and say it's for efficiency. Then they can do the dirty things you want to do and take the blame and ignore the requirement of majority. And if they don't do what you want (like the previous accounting standards boards before FASB) you can get rid of them and put a new one in.

Think about it, they could have just disbanded the board doing this if it had been something they didn't want.

FASB [Financial_Accounting_Standards_Board]APB [Accounting_Principles_Board] (The APB was disbanded in the hopes that the smaller, fully independent FASB could more effectively create accounting standards.)I think there was one before this too.

I know this from accounting. My professor said that the reason FASB didn't stop things like partial completion revenue recognition for software companies (preferential treatment of a sort) and stuff with the oil industry is because "that wasn't the sword they wanted to die on".

Thank God for Skyrim being offline.

DaBigCheez wrote:

gd1 wrote:Would you like dial up for 30.99 per month? Or Would you like to upgrade to decade old speed for 60? Higher speeds will cost per GB used. [Just speculation]

They can already do this at will, net neutrality doesn't affect that.

More like "Enjoy unlimited* broadband access for only $59.99/mo!"

*Full network speeds apply only to sites in provider network. Network speeds to access Imgur, Youtube, or Steam are limited to 1 KB/s. Please purchase our Deluxe Bundle for $129.99/mo to include Youtube, or all three for only $199.99/mo more. All Hulu access will cost $50 per GB.

Is that per device? Or for a whole family? Also, if I get blacklisted will I be immediately limited to 1 byte per hour speeds or is their a curve for it? What counts as "offensive content" for getting blacklisted? What can I download in 24 hours at 1 byte per hour speeds? Can I pay to get off the blacklist?

Want to hold a protest?No tv station will risk their bandwidth for you. Nor any newspaper. Nor any radio station. If you can even upload your post about the protest, facebook/youtube/etc won't risk their bandwidth and will take it down. If you do it on your own website, even if you manage, who can load that page at 1 byte per hour speeds? They aren't stopping you from having internet access, they're legally giving you the worst service they have. No court or politician wants their access diminished either. Want to do it over their phone networks, not likely.

It may bear repeating (partially): I think we're about to see (in some ways) the worst information blackout since the dark ages.

How did people have protests before the modern age without newspapers?

It's a mistake to think of it as an end-user thing. Nobody will have to pay extra for Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc. Those companies will have already brokered deals with all ISPs with any reach. Rather, it's about sites like xkcd, imdb, wikipedia, and tvtropes. They will not be able to pay to access the fast lane, and may be seen as competition to Facebook et al. Sure, ISPs could offer "all the little content" for an extra $25/month, but few people will pay that when they can get the big ones as part of basic service. So those sites will wither, and people will migrate to Facebook, Twitter.... just like the big boxes killed Main Street.

Sure, there are still stores on Main Street, and nobody is prevented from shopping there. But Walmart didn't get its rep for nothing.

Want a preview? Start watching flat earth videos.

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

Large scale social media amplifies the crazy. It does so by design (though not by conspiracy) - the participants vie for views and likes to stroke their ego, and the crazy gets more views because it's crazy. More views means more ad revenue, which leads large scale social media to favor this. It's one of the reasons alt-right radio succeeds so well, and one of the reasons we have Trump in the first place.

Flat earth is crazy. But it is gaining traction as far as I can tell; there are always flat earth videos in my suggestions, and I don't even sign in to google or youtube except rarely for google docs. I've watched them; they are dangerous.

Spoiler:

There are several distinct types of people involved:1: The ringleaders. I don't know if they are actually batshit crazy, or if they are stirring the pot for amusement, and I don't know how many are sock puppets, but there are enough of them. Some go back to the bible for truth, some declaim NASA as a hoax, some do faulty experiments (for example, photos of ships on the horizon that because of refraction, show more behind the horizon than in a vacuum) and then reject refraction.

2: The followers. These appear to have been be convinced by the ringleaders and now realize "the truth".

3: The actually curious. Science does move forward by questioning and experimenting, but it's tricky. There are often secondary effects to compensate for, and sometimes tertiary effects too, before you can arrive at the right conclusion given the data. These people are to be commended, as they actually do experiments, but don't know why what they are doing is wrong. (Can you show the earth is not flat, using nothing but your own resources? Probably, but it's not that easy. Could you do it with no understanding of the scientific method and/or the science behind it?) The flat earth people have their attention, in part because crazy gets more views (and more ads, and more coverage...)

If group 3 grows, there might come a tipping point where science is rejected, intelligent design gets equal time in the schools, polluters are put in direct control of the EPA, and actual truth ceases to matter. Wait...

The bigger and more commercial youtube becomes, the more it will be curated for us, so as to improve their bottom line at the expense of our bottom. Sure, if you start watching {this stuff} youtube will show you more {this stuff}, but as youtube became channelized, and the channels became monetized, the other stuff is getting squeezed out.

It's a model and preview of the enormous influence large scale social media has on us and on society.

At the moment, small scale social media (and other small scale web projects) are still around. The end of network neutrality however makes it easy to cut off their air supply, leaving only the big players.

This plays right into everything else our Supreme Leader has been doing. Bread and circuses. It's a warning, not a recipe!

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

*Full network speeds apply only to sites in provider network. Network speeds to access Imgur, Youtube, or Steam are limited to 1 KB/s. Please purchase our Deluxe Bundle for $129.99/mo to include Youtube, or all three for only $199.99/mo more. All Hulu access will cost $50 per GB.

* for 6 months, then £75/mo for Airspeed plus £15/mo for Airpseed Kids plus £30/mo for Airspeed Movies plus £30/mo for Airspeed Sports thereafter. Movies on Movies Plus charged at £5 per view or partial view. Movies on Exclusives charged at £15 per view or partial view. Series on Exclusives charged at £5 per episode viewed in whole or in part. Some sports fixtures may incur an additional £10 viewing charge. Interactive features on Airspeed Kids may incur an additional 50p charge per use. Minimum contract term 5 years. Contract termination fee £1000. Early termination fee £5000. Your home is at risk if you do not keep up repayments. Offer not available where not legally enforceable.

Petersen wilted in the face of the simple and polite questioning by Senator John Kennedy, a Trump-supporting Republican from Louisiana, not previously known as a leader of the vast leftwing conspiracy.

Petersen has served as a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, which explains a lot about the FEC’s reputation for almost complete uselessness.

It’s worth making the blindingly obvious hypothetical comparison to a notional nominee under the last president. Let’s say Barack Obama had put forward an utterly unqualified person for a lifetime judge’s job – someone so useless that they hadn’t even boned up on basic legal terms any judge would need to know. And let’s say that nominee was a person of color. What do you think the public reaction would be?

Now is the time to stand back and admire in all its glory the sight of the white male equivalent in the Trump era.

sardia wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/us/politics/republican-tax-bill.htmlThe GOP is set to pass the compromise tax bill after giving concessions to Rubio, raising the refundable tax credit from 55% to 70% of 2000$. The bill will probably pass unless McCain or Cochrane drops dead.

Why do they make it a percentage of $2000, rather than just a flat number?

Saying "it's $1400" is logically equivalent for pretty much any reasonable tax scenario, right? Why not make it simpler?

sardia wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/us/politics/republican-tax-bill.htmlThe GOP is set to pass the compromise tax bill after giving concessions to Rubio, raising the refundable tax credit from 55% to 70% of 2000$. The bill will probably pass unless McCain or Cochrane drops dead.

Why do they make it a percentage of $2000, rather than just a flat number?

Saying "it's $1400" is logically equivalent for pretty much any reasonable tax scenario, right? Why not make it simpler?

Marketing, pure and simple.

Because math is scary to the Republican base and people are lazy - how many would know it was $1400 and not just see the shiny "It jumped by 15%! OOOH!"?

"Does this smell like chloroform to you?""Google tells me you are not unique. You are, however, wrong."nɒʜƚɒɿ_nɒɿɘ

sardia wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/us/politics/republican-tax-bill.htmlThe GOP is set to pass the compromise tax bill after giving concessions to Rubio, raising the refundable tax credit from 55% to 70% of 2000$. The bill will probably pass unless McCain or Cochrane drops dead.

Why do they make it a percentage of $2000, rather than just a flat number?

Saying "it's $1400" is logically equivalent for pretty much any reasonable tax scenario, right? Why not make it simpler?

It's this way because they're not actually addressing the inherent complexity.

The Child tax credit is not entirely "refundable". That is to say if your taxes were over $2,000 a year then you would see your taxes reduced to $0, however if you paid $500 in taxes you would get your taxes reduced to $0, and get a refund of $1100 (using the 55% number) for a total benefit of $1,600.

Grand upshot if you have huge tax bill you get all $2,000 of the child credit, if you're making minimum wage and effectively don't pay taxes then you only get the refundable portion (55%, $1,100) of the tax credit.

We're in the traffic-chopper over the XKCD boards where there's been a thread-derailment. A Liquified Godwin spill has evacuated threads in a fourty-post radius of the accident, Lolcats and TVTropes have broken free of their containers. It is believed that the Point has perished.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/po ... m-alabama/Looking back over all the special elections, here are some lessons learned1. Suburbs are the Democrat's weakest strength. Aka, don't count on white women to save you.2. Democrats are looking at a 11 point congressional lead, aka Run candidates everywhere. Let the raw statistical power of shotgunning the entire map to snag extra red seats. Republicans can't have perfect candidates everywhere.3. Sexual harassment matters. (Or assault at least), especially given that Politicians are some of the worst offenders.4. Follow A Wet Rag Stuffed Into a Tailpipe's advice on running nonmoderate candidates, "I'm a partisan, but I'm not angry about it." If you're candidate doesn't fit the partisan lean of the district, it won't matter nearly as much as running a crappy candidate.

I think 2, and 3 matters the most. Point 1 isn't really important unless Democrats decide to focus resources on suburbs instead of running everywhere. 4 Doesn't matter as much because Democrats have tons of candidates this year.

sardia wrote:2. Democrats are looking at a 11 point congressional lead, aka Run candidates everywhere. Let the raw statistical power of shotgunning the entire map to snag extra red seats. Republicans can't have perfect candidates everywhere.

I actually disagree with the 11 point congressional lead. The usual logic from that involves extrapolating backward from actual results to expected results with regards to special elections.

Unfortunately, those expectations may not be accurate. Look at the folks saying that Moore's election bodes ill for the Republicans. Yeah, Alabama in general may lean heavily red, but they didn't actually like Moore all that much. He was a particularly bad candidate, and not just because of the recent scandal. Why? 'cause he's bugnuts crazy. The Constitution Party is the political equivalent of that guy who thinks he can force the cops to obey him due to loudly quoting the constitution or something.

Look at the guy's electoral history. The 2017 primary is the only non judiciary vote he's ever won, and he's not gotten close to a majority of the vote. The guy's political career is not stellar. Yeah, he was a judge, but basically...Karl Rove and company put him in power, and he got himself kicked out for ethics violations. He's really only popular with the religious right, and his career is basically a history of failure.

The Republicans had better available people. It wasn't a matter of not being able to run perfect candidates everywhere. It was an unforced error due to listening to the religious right, who pretty much sink the Republicans whenever they are listened to. Their candidates are usually pretty unelectable in general elections.

So, I think that even if this scandal hadn't cropped up, Moore would not have enjoyed the average lead republicans get in Alabama. Oh, he would have won, but likely not by all that much. It's part scandal, part hatred of him for other reasons, but it really doesn't have a ton to do with Trump/the national sentiment.

If a Democrat was all but convicted of pedophilia, and lost an election, would we be saying "oh the fact that a pedophile lost an election means the democrats are in trouble?" No, we wouldn't, and anyone insisting it to be so would be viewed as a delusional wingnut. Moore's loss doesn't mean the republicans are in trouble. They could be, but Moore is not evidence of that. I mean, if he won, would we say the republicans are safe, or that they are assholes for reelecting the pervert?

Every special election since the 2016 General has averaged upwards of a 10-point Democratic lean. This isn't just about Moore. The generic congressional ballot could even be underestimating based on the results that have come in, and it currently has them at +11. The historical record would indicate that lead is unlikely to change much in the GOP's favor before the midterm.

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

CorruptUser wrote:If a Democrat was all but convicted of pedophilia, and lost an election, would we be saying "oh the fact that a pedophile lost an election means the democrats are in trouble?" No, we wouldn't, and anyone insisting it to be so would be viewed as a delusional wingnut. Moore's loss doesn't mean the republicans are in trouble. They could be, but Moore is not evidence of that. I mean, if he won, would we say the republicans are safe, or that they are assholes for reelecting the pervert?

The margin of victory is the important metrics here. Historically, scandals only cost a politician 10-13 points. Roy Moore had a huge lead, which meant even pedophilia alone couldn't sink him. He had to be scandalized, and fight a resurgent Democratic candidate. Or are you and Tyndmyr claiming that pedophilia/scandal is worth infinite points? Like you would bet against senator menendez winning reelection if he survives a primary challenge?

A single election isn't predictive, but we have a good dozen special elections and a November election to go off of. What do you think the Democratic congressional advantage is for the midterms?

Liri wrote:Every special election since the 2016 General has averaged upwards of a 10-point Democratic lean. This isn't just about Moore. The generic congressional ballot could even be underestimating based on the results that have come in, and it currently has them at +11. The historical record would indicate that lead is unlikely to change much in the GOP's favor before the midterm.

It's an average of relatively few data points, and some of those data points are definitively not average. That calls the +11 into question for extrapolation to a larger trend. There's probably some edge, but it may not be that large, and even a few percentage points off on a large extrapolation like that can have very differing results nationwide.

There have been seven special elections, six for congress, one for senate. The congressional seats were held by 5 republicans and 1 democrat. They were replaced by 5 republicans and 1 democrat. The *only* switch has been Moore's senate run.

The fact that some of these races were lost by less than they were during Hillary's run is interesting, and potentially encouraging for Democrats, but the only concrete gain is most directly attributable to Moore being a dumpster fire of a human being.

Some folks are trying to extrapolate from state data instead(If you count all, democrats do indeed lead 12 to 11), but there are a TON of state seats out there, and this is way less informative than comparing apples to apples. It seems like a case of looking for the more desirable information, not the most applicable information.

A more logical explanation for at least some of the gains in the national races is that incumbents generally enjoy an advantage. One would expect a new contender to a seat to usually have a narrower race than one who occupies a safe seat.

If you look at 538's breakdown, you'll note that there's a huge variance there. They believe that districts are shifting partisanship by like, 60% in some cases. That's not very realistic. Voting patterns are fairly predictable in general, and trends in partisanship do not generally bounce around with numbers like that. This indicates that numbers are being used wrong(in this case, lumping together the votes for all candidates of a party is probably not very predictive of a head to head race in 2018).

Sardia wrote:The margin of victory is the important metrics here. Historically, scandals only cost a politician 10-13 points. Roy Moore had a huge lead, which meant even pedophilia alone couldn't sink him. He had to be scandalized, and fight a resurgent Democratic candidate.Or are you and Tyndmyr claiming that pedophilia/scandal is worth infinite points? Like you would bet against senator menendez winning reelection if he survives a primary challenge?

No. I'm postulating that while the scandal was probably indeed worth about that much, Moore's lead was never actually that of an average republican candidate. Look at his prior election attempts. The guy is not liked, even by the right. Or look at his poll numbers, and it's obvious that the two bounced back and forth, with an average trendline that was pretty close to even.

Moore never had a lead so huge that it required more than the scandal to explain.

Even before the scandal, Moore was only up at most ten points in the polls, hovering around 50% with around 10% undecided. In 2010, a Republican won 65%-35%. So, yes, a huge part of that loss was Trump, and Moore most likely would have won if Clinton was President, scandal or not.

Not every race is going to go as badly for Republicans as this Alabama Senate election — but if enough go half as badly, or even a third as badly, they’re still in for a rough time next year.

The point is that, yes Moore is an extreme person. But you have those in an extreme state. You'd need an extreme scandal, or extreme lack of support (which goes hand-in-hand with the scandal) to see a Republican candidate lose. But in other states (or districts for the seats in the house), you won't need that bad news for the Republicans. There are plenty of seats less red that the Democrats can focus on. And they need only a net gain of 25 seats.

In the article I linked, they estimate the loss went down to three things:

1) The national political environment.2) Roy Moore in general, without the problems from the assault cases.3) The assault cases specifically.

They also mentioned that if every seat in the house, that is as Red as Alabama, the Democrats would gain 160 seats, which is a complete and total landslide. Because of partisantism, this will never happen unless all 160 people are nutjobs like Roy Moore AND have sexual harassment cases following them.

They need less than 1/6th of that, so I expect partisanship won't even get close to saving the GOP in the next midterms, though if this partisanship thing was less of a thing in the US, it would far better for everyone. Elections won't only have a bigger impact in who wins and loses seats, but also in the politician's probability to listen to their voters. Right now a large part of the GOP (or the Democrats) won't have to listen because people will vote for them anyway.